current community

more communities

Minecrafter and Stack Exchanger Fbrereto needed some Tips for not getting lost underground? because he found compasses of no use if the cave extended underneath the spawn or was too far away to show any change. A whole host of suggestion were given, so much so that we thought it deserved blog post. So in order of up-votes: How do you avoid getting lost?zzzzBov suggested stocking up and presented a list of must have items to survive and avoid losing your bearings. Of course bows and other weapons are necessities to not getting killed and losing all your spoils. also torches and pickaxes (maybe even special emergency ones) will allow you to dig to the surface if you get lost, and not so obvious, a bucket of water, useful for stopping lava, scaling walls (both up and down) and slowing the oncoming hoards!
He also suggested you work out a pattern that you can build out of dirt or cobblestone to help you find the way out without resorting to those inventory filling signs.

I noted a handy tip for always knowing which way north is if you place a cobblestone block and look at the top of it there is a handy feature on the default texture pack: a dark L is the top right corner, look at if from this direction and you will be facing north!

GnomeSlice presented the ingenious idea of re-texturing paintings to have arrows on them this saves on space because they (unlike signs) can stack and the information can be much more obvious that signs (especially from long distances).

Tanath pointed out that if you press F3 all the information about the memory, chunks and position is displayed, if you know the co-ordinates of the cave entrance, just move in the direction that makes you get closer to those numbers (remember Y is height so you can ignore that number).

The three numbers at the bottom of the list show position.

And finally remember to always carry at least one stack of logs this can make almost anything you will need when you are down there, don’t be afraid to place a workbench while your down there!